Emma Brooks Baxter limped out of the sealed preparation area of her cafeteria through the airlock that connected her silent kitchen with the generally raucous cafeteria. Eager Mars colonists often sat, stood, or paced around, waiting for the smorgasbord tables and counters to fill up.

 

She sniffed but couldn't detect any hint of the pervasive, caustic, peroxide Martian dust.

 

It was a little late for the breakfast crowd but too early for lunch. There were still enough selections of food in the heated or refrigerated containers on the counters. Emma always made sure she left enough edibles available before she disappeared into the preparation room to create new delights.

 

She yanked off her baking cap, a garment she had constructed herself. With a little creative experimentation she had come up with a sealed, plastic, head covering that bore a mild resemblance to what various religions on Earth had demanded of women worshipers.

 

It was perhaps a little extreme, but she couldn't be careful enough when she prepared food for her Martian colonists.

 

This cap was literally taped around her hairline and included a huge, stiff collar-like edge bent upwards and reaching past her electrostatic facemask that covered her mouth and nose.

 

Emma wore such extreme baking headgear because it was perfect for keeping any kind of biological droppings from entering the cafeteria food chain. The cap with shield and mask looked ugly, but the wisdom she accumulated with age had long since eliminated any tendencies she had toward vanity. Survival on Mars demanded different traits.

 

Shifting her weight from one aching foot to another, she checked her short, white, wavy hair in the reflection on the refrigerator door to make sure it didn't look too unruly once liberated from the huge cap. She resisted the urge to run her stubby fingers through her hair.

 

Not necessary. Emma was old, short, and chubby but, amazingly enough, had a head of thick, curly, sparkling white hair that took care of itself. Her sufficiently thick layer of subcutaneous fat also provided her with a face as smooth as a teenager's.

 

Two customers ─ they looked like David Grundy, the robot engineer, and a young woman she didn't recognize ─ sat over at the panorama windows. David's hair had some gray patches, and he sported a number of superfluous kilos.

 

Obviously, he spent most of his time creating and testing his robots instead of working out. He hadn't been on Mars as long as Emma, but she also had never gotten into the habit of regular, consistent exercise.

 

Still, Emma congratulated herself silently. She had been right to insist on having the cafeteria up on the surface of Mars, in a circular structure complete with a panorama view through clear but radiation-resistant, plastic, floor-to-ceiling windows. It may have been costly, but it gave the community a place to gather and remember why they all wanted to leave Earth and come to Mars in the first place.

 

The reddish-orange rocks and dancing dust devils on the surface as well as the gently sloped hills leading up to the cold volcanoes on the Tharsis Bulge were as soothing a sight as forests and lakes had been back on Earth.

 

The wind-blown, orange surface of Mars had its own unique, hypnotic, healing power. Emma had insisted on making the cafeteria walls, floors and furnishings a lighter shade of this reddish-orange surface.

 

Not for the first time did Emma sense that settlers on Mars were in fact coming home to where life had first taken hold in the solar system some billions of years ago. When she got to Mars, she immediately felt that she belonged to two planets. Lately, she felt a longing to be at home in the entire universe.

 

The cafeteria, as she insisted, never closed. Despite Mayor Berry's dire predictions, there had never been any vandalism. The grateful customers took care of the room when Emma wasn't there.

Emma preferred to do the cooking and baking in the morning, go back to her apartment for a nap when necessary, and afterwards hang around the cafeteria all evening when the scientists and engineers came looking for something to eat while they brainstormed. Although she appreciated their compliments for her tasty food, she enjoyed their expert and informed speculations even more.

 

One reason why she was so fond of the engineers was that they made human habitation on Mars possible. Emma did her bit by keeping the colonists fed, but it was the engineers who kept everyone supplied with necessities like pressurized living and working quarters, radiation protection, breathable air, and uncontaminated water.

 

"Can I get you anything?" Emma yelled in David's direction.

 

Her voice was loud and firm without any trace of a quaver. In the many years she had now spent on Mars no one had yet been able to shout her down. Few were even foolish enough to try.

 

Occasionally she did feel a little crotchety with her thirty-eight Martian years (definitely another reason to come to Mars ─ having your age sound younger). She also didn't move her short and stocky bulk around as quickly or gracefully as she once did. Her grateful customers, however, were the best therapy for her aging body's occasional laments, one of the many benefits of living on Mars.

 

"Well, could we have some chocolate chip cookies, and do you have a minute for us?" David yelled back. "You know it's impossible to resist your cookies."

 

"Always," she said as she took a plate of cookies out of the container under the counter. Whenever she was in her serving element, she felt decades younger. So she made the mistake of trying to sprint over to the window. Pain flowed up from her aching feet to her throbbing head. Not good. After standing for the time it took to make her chocolate chip cookies, her muscles and joints stayed stiff for longer and longer periods of time.

 

Despite regular injections of precisely designed nanobots ─ still forbidden as too experimental on Earth but a common treatment here on Mars ─ her extremities complained bitterly if she demanded too much of them. However, genuine appreciation from her ravenous customers often functioned as an effective analgesic.

 

Moving gingerly, trying not to torment her swollen feet and ankles any more than absolutely necessary, she shuffled her way over to David's table.

 

"Sit down and rest a little," David said. Emma was more than willing to comply.

 

"Emma, I wanted to ask a favor," he said, pointing at the young woman at his table. "This is Cornelia. She is developing new software for my robots. Could she watch you work in your kitchen so she can write software that will tell robots how to cook and bake?"

 

Cornelia, tall and slim, obviously a genuine, home-grown Martian, probably around ten Martian years old, looked up at Emma and smiled hesitantly. "It would be a huge help," the young woman said.

 

Emma laughed. "Cornelia is welcome to come and watch, but there's no way you can get robots to do everything right in a kitchen."

 

David shook his head and smiled. "Don't underestimate my robots," he said.

 

"Besides," Emma said. "I don't need robot help and I doubt people here in the habitat will want a kitchen robot for their own tiny kitchen areas. Most people prefer to eat here in the cafeteria."

 

"Of course they do," David said. "None of us are complete idiots. Nobody can fix food as good as what we get here. However, I want to think about the future. Soon there will be many more habitats here on Mars, but no one can guarantee that there will be enough human beings who are willing and able to cook and bake as well as you do."

 

"And there are plans for settlements farther out in the solar system," Cornelia said. "I've heard people talk about going to Europa, Titan, Pluto, or even Sedna."

 

That piqued Emma's interest. She looked at the reddish-brown mural of the surface of Mars that she had had painted on the ceiling of her cafeteria. Emma had always had a soft spot in her heart for astronomers.

 

In her mind, for human beings there could be no task more important than exploring the universe. She also thought serious researchers could only rid themselves of their earthbound bias by leaving their home planet. The next logical step, of course, would be losing a marsbound bias by continuing to move outward in the solar system.

 

Emma was convinced Mars was meant to be the steppingstone to the rest of the universe. In order make this planet their home, human beings had had to find a way to deal with the cold vacuum conditions, the radiation, and the dust. Other planets or places would offer other specific challenges. Too bad it wasn't possible to eliminate everything that threatened human life.

 

So, obviously, robots that could cook and bake weren't such a bad idea. She had her doubts, though, about how much she wanted to be involved with the whole development process.

 

After all these years, her baking and cooking processes were completely automatic, things she did without having to think. She probably couldn't explain them all that well and didn't feel like having to justify why she did any of the specific things she did.

 

She tapped slightly swollen fingers on the sturdy, red, plastic table and looked out the panorama windows of the surface cafeteria. There was something about the dusty, red rocks and Olympus Mons in the distance that made her feel optimistic in spite of herself. Actually, it was a no-brainer, time to go with her gut instinct, not her critical objections. Of course she wanted to help David.

 

"When would you like to start?" she asked Cornelia.

 

"Thanks," David said. "Is tomorrow all right?

 

"Perfect," Emma said. "I always do my baking early in the morning. Why don't we start with chocolate chip cookies right away tomorrow as soon as I get to work."

 

The next day Cornelia was already waiting for Emma when she arrived. "Do you want to do any of the baking yourself?" Emma asked her.

 

"No," Cornelia said as she showed Emma her little video communicator. "I just want to watch and record everything you do and ask you incredibly stupid questions. That way I can figure out what commands to give to the robots."

 

"Some of the other assistants are working on more advanced AI for robots so that those metal toys can figure things out for themselves, but for cooking and baking David thinks it is best to give them detailed instructions and not assume they can learn anything on their own."

 

"I guess that makes sense," Emma said. "Okay, here goes. First, I have to attach my cooking cap to make sure nothing from my head enters the cookie dough. Then we'll go through the airlock to my dust-free kitchen."

 

"How do you keep any room dust-free?" Cornelia asked. "I mean the air circulation is pretty good here in the Bradbury habitat, and the air purifiers work nonstop, but I still always notice the bleachy smell of dust, although not as much in your cafeteria."

 

"The airlock helps keep the dust out of the kitchen, and you'll see the impermeable seals around all entrances to my preparation area," Emma said as she taped the edges of her cap to her face.

 

Emma navigated herself and Cornelia through the airlock and into her kitchen area. So far, so good. To be honest, Emma wasn't all that fond of her kitchen's blindingly white appearance, with its sparkling walls, ceilings, and appliances. The bright whiteness hurt her aging eyes, but it was necessary.

 

She needed to see the first invasion of swirling red dust in the well-circulated air. She didn't have complete control over what happened after the food left her kitchen, but she could and did ensure it was prepared without Martian dust as an extra ingredient.

 

"Wow," Cornelia said. "You know, people love the taste of what you serve here. You are famous as a cook, nutritionist, and confectioner. My parents keep telling me how amazed they are that you can take the vegetables grown on Mars and make food and drink that tastes exactly like what they remember eating on Earth."

 

"That's the result of years of experiments, most of which failed the first several times around," Emma said. "It took me a while to adapt my recipes to the reality of what could be grown and harvested on Mars. Fortunately, the first settlers were very patient with me. I wonder if people will be as patient with robots. We generally demand immediate perfection from our machines."

 

"That's my challenge," Cornelia said. "I have to make the robots function so well people don't have to be patient."

 

"Hmm," Emma said skeptically. Apparently, the teachers on Mars never bothered to mention Murphy's Law.

 

"Well, I'll get started, and you ask me all the questions that occur to you," Emma continued.

 

Emma placed two food processors and several wooden spoons into the transparent plastic cabinet. Next to the processors in the cabinet, she placed the sealed containers of margarine, white and brown sugar, vanilla, vegetable oil, salt, baking soda, flour, and chocolate chips.

 

All those months of browbeating the gardeners into growing sugar cane, cacao beans, and vanilla in the covered greenhouses on the surface were finally going to show results. There had been some cost involved, especially for the extra water these crops needed, but she had made her billionaire brother comprehend the necessity. He was paying for the settlement, and she had long since decided that that included all her culinary necessities.

 

Emma placed her hands into the shoulder-length plastic gloves that extended into the transparent plastic cabinet and were firmly sealed around the edges between the gloves and the walls of the cabinet. She opened the containers, and dumped the Mars-grown sugar, Mars-developed margarine, and vegetable oil, fortunately a suitable substitute for eggs, into the first food processor.

 

She set the air cleaner to pump out the air in the plastic cabinet and replace it with newly filtered air. Once the gauge showed the new air composition she set the timer and turned the processor on setting the speed at low and the timer for the required minutes. With the significantly lower gravity on this planet, sugar and margarine didn't blend well at high speeds; they just floated around uselessly.

 

The timer buzzed. Emma put her hands into the gloves again and stopped the food processor. She stuck the longest spoon into the mixture and moved it around. The recipe said the sugar/margarine mixture should be fluffy, which was a little difficult to determine at a distance. However, it felt soft enough. She added the vanilla.

 

Cornelia spoke into her communicator while she filmed everything that Emma did.

 

Suddenly Emma had a thought.

 

"There might be a problem," she told Cornelia. "I'm now at the point of determining whether the substitute cooking oil and sugar mixture is creamy enough for me to add the substitute vanilla. Actually, the mixture has to be almost fluffy. This is a critical point in the process and determines how soft and chewy the cookies will be after they are baked. But I always determine it by whether the dough feels creamy enough to me when I stir it."

 

"Okay, then I have to come up with a device that can measure degrees of fluffiness and provide a mathematical description of the desired amount which the robots will understand and be able to measure themselves," Cornelia said. "I'll send David a message and we'll work on that as soon as I'm done here. That's not a deal breaker."

 

Emma was a little speechless at the young woman's optimism. Obviously, that was the difference between engineers and cooks. Engineers were sure they could come up with a machine that worked perfectly while cooks knew they couldn't trust any machine completely.

 

Emma's back started twinging uncomfortably. Standing for any length of time wasn't good for her bones and muscles. Unfortunately, she had never been satisfied with the cookies when she tried to sit while baking. So, she tried to ignore the spurts of pain and poured flour, salt, and baking soda into the second food processor.

 

These ingredients didn't have to mix quite as long as the sugar and margarine. She started the motor in the container. When the ingredients were mixed sufficiently, she poured them into the sugar/margarine mixture in the first food processor. After putting the lid on the now full food processor, she turned it back on for the required number of minutes.

 

Emma took the top off the processor, inserted a spoon and moved it around the dough. Yes, it had just the right amount of stiffness for cookies that would be chewy but not so flat as to burn.

 

"Your new machine also has to measure this consistency," Emma told Cornelia, who nodded and said something into her device. "This is the point when I add the chocolate chips and form the cookies." Emma added the chocolate chips, replaced the lid and let the processor run for a few seconds.

 

"I also prefer to mold the cookies to the desired size by hand," Emma continued. Cornelia spoke quickly into her communicator.

 

Emma went to a wall cupboard and pulled out greased cookie sheets sealed in plastic bags. She inserted them into the transparent plastic cabinet, again replaced the air with sanitized, dust-free air, and then removed the plastic bag around the first baking sheet. She placed each molded cookie onto the sheet. Cornelia jabbered nonstop into her communicator.

 

"Now it's vitally important to get the unbaked cookies into the oven without the cookies acquiring any dust," Emma said. "I place the full cookie sheet back into the plastic bag, then transfer the bag to the oven, only sliding the sheet out of the bag when it is in the oven, then closing the oven as quickly as possible."

 

Cornelia repeated the numbers as Emma told her about how long each cookie sheet needed to stay in the oven, set to which temperature. While they waited for the first batch to bake, Emma prepared the next cookie sheet. When the first batch came out of the oven, she placed it into a fortified container where the cookies could cool in freshly purified air.

 

Emma always did everything she could to keep her antiseptic kitchen as dust-free as possible, and today it seemed she was successful. Two deep inhales and all she smelled were her freshly baked chocolate chip cookies, the gooey, sweet dough with its crispy edges and the slightly bitter, softened chocolate morsels. She detected no hint of the bleachy smell of the pervasive, caustic, peroxide Martian dust.

 

"Well," Emma said. "That's the process for chocolate chip cookies. What else do you need from me?"

 

"I think I have enough to write instructions for the robots," Cornelia said. "Will you let us test the first robot in your kitchen?"

 

"Certainly," Emma said. "I have my doubts, but I have no objection to letting a robot try to cook or bake. You know, my motto ever since I took over the cafeteria was that the food had to be plentiful and it had to taste good. Everything else continues to be just a means to an end."

 

"Great," Cornelia said. "Then I'll be on my way."

 

"The airlock to the cafeteria serving area works like all the airlocks in the habitat," Emma said. "Just press the right buttons."

 

Apparently she did. Cornelia left, no warning sirens went off, and Emma finished baking the cookies. While waiting for each batch to bake, she did allow herself the luxury of sitting down. Unfortunately, it got harder to get up after each interlude of sitting. Stiff muscles were one definite annoyance of the aging process.

 

After only a week, Cornelia showed up with the first robot. Its performance turned out to be a disaster. The robot slammed its hands through the gloves and spread microscopic pieces of plastic throughout the container with the food processors. It took Emma days to get the container cleaned to her satisfaction.

 

The next robot refused to start the food processors because it detected weights and volumes of the ingredients inconsistent with the recipe, inconsistent within a range of two picograms. No amount of persuasion or immediately updated software was able to alter its behavior.

 

The third robot refused to take the cookies out of the oven or to allow Emma to override it and take them out herself because it detected dust in the kitchen air, this time in yoctograms per cubic liter of air. Cornelia said they would have to work on better fuzzy logic for the robots. The kitchen stank of burned cookies for several hours.

 

Gradually the robots improved and the machines caused less and less trouble. Emma found herself looking forward to each new prototype. After she made various useful suggestions, Cornelia took the time to show Emma how to write programs for the robots. Since this involved little physical exertion, Emma discovered she actually enjoyed it.

 

She started reflecting on things, often staring out the windows at the now so very familiar Martian landscape. Her body was not the same efficient machine it had been when she came to Mars, but her mind worked better than ever before, maybe due to the experience of learning to thrive on a hostile planet.

 

One day she invited David and Cornelia to the cafeteria for a festive menu prepared exclusively by the newest robot. It was a complete success. "This tastes great," David said as she stood at his table. "I think your other customers are jealous."

 

Indeed. Many settlers in the cafeteria walked over to David's table and looked longingly at the fragrant plates of food. "Can't we get some of that, Emma?" various voices chirped in.

 

"Starting next week," she said. "This is still a test." That promise seemed to pacify some of them.

 

David looked up. "Does that mean you want to use a robot assistant in your kitchen full time?" he asked. "That would be great publicity for us."

 

Emma sat down. She had been standing for too long again. "Actually," she said. "Not as an assistant. Your robots are now as competent as I am. The food they prepare is as good as what I make. You will need to do more with AI so that they learn how to continue to improve on their own and adapt to new circumstances, but that will take time."

 

"Well," Cornelia said between bites. "You can still supervise and teach them new things. That will improve their learning skills."

 

"For a while," Emma agreed. "However, I am at the point where I have to admit that my body isn't up to as much strenuous activity as it used to be. I've noticed a definite improvement in my quality of life since the robots took over most of the physical work of cooking and baking."

 

"Okay?" David said, not bothering to hide his puzzlement.

 

"And the mental challenge of learning how to program the robots has been good for me," Emma said. "I was getting too complacent, too lazy here on Mars. So it's time for the next logical step."

 

"Which is?" David asked.

 

"I signed up for the underwater colony on Europa next year," she said. "It will be a challenge for everyone involved, but I'll take along robots for the hard physical labor. The colonists will need good food there, and I can train the robots to provide it."

 

"You got accepted for the team?" Cornelia asked.

 

"Well, there was some persuasion involved," Emma admitted. "But my brother is still paying for the whole thing, and so he bought me a place in the colony. However, I plan to earn my way, just as I did on Mars."

 

"Your robots should just make it easier. They plan to put us into a kind of hibernation for the trip, and I've always been good at sleeping. Once we get there, I'll be able to function again."

 

"Then hurry up and finish your food," Cornelia said to David. "We have to adapt the programming for kitchen robots so they work on Europa."

 

"Actually," Emma said, standing up stiffly. "I also have a few ideas. I had to research the project fairly well before I could browbeat Ned into letting me go."

 

"Yes," Cornelia said. "We also have to make sure we have enough capable robots for Mars habitats after Emma leaves."

 

Emma smiled. She felt the same anticipation and apprehension she had felt coming to Mars. That was a sign that she had made the right decision.

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